Brent Harris

Name
Brent Harris
Date of birth
1956
Place of birth
Palmerston North/Manawatu-Whanganui (region)/New Zealand
Gender
Male
Biography
Brent Harris was born in Palmerston North, Aotearoa New Zealand in 1956. He relocated to Melbourne, Australia in 1981 and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Victorian College of the Arts in 1984. He is celebrated as one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists.

As a painter and printmaker, Harris’s practice moves between abstraction and figuration. His works are often described as being emotionally charged, psychological and intellectual explorations of familial relationships, religiosity and sexual identity as well as his own personal experiences of living as a young, gay man during the AIDS/HIV epidemic of the 1980s.

Harris has exhibited extensively in Australia and has featured in several notable international shows. He has been awarded a number of residencies including at Nagasawa Art Park, Japan, the Singapore Tyler Print Institute and the British School at Rome. He was also the recipient of three grants from the Visual Arts/Craft Board of the Australia Council, in 1988 and in 1997. His works are held in the collections of many large Australian and New Zealand institutions, including the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art; in New Zealand his practice is represented in the collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū in addition to Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.

He lives and works in Melbourne.